Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (soundtrack)

Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is an album by jazz musician Miles Davis. It was recorded at Le Poste Parisien Studio in Paris on December 4 and 5, 1957. The album features the musical cues for the 1958 Louis Malle film Ascenseur pour l'échafaud.

Jean-Paul Rappeneau, a jazz fan and Malle's assistant at the time, suggested asking Miles Davis to create the film's soundtrack – possibly inspired by the Modern Jazz Quartet's recording for Roger Vadim's Sait-on jamais (Lit: 'Does One Ever Know', released as: 'No Sun in Venice'), released a few months earlier in 1957.

Davis was booked to perform at the Club Saint-Germain in Paris for November 1957. Rappeneau introduced him to Malle, and Davis agreed to record the music after attending a private screening. On December 4, he brought his four sidemen to the recording studio without having had them prepare anything. Davis only gave the musicians a few rudimentary harmonic sequences he had assembled in his hotel room, and, once the plot was explained, the band improvised without any precomposed theme, while edited loops of the musically relevant film sequences were projected in the background.

Elevator to the Gallows

Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is a 1958 French crime film directed by Louis Malle. It was released as Elevator to the Gallows in the United States (aka Frantic) and as Lift to the Scaffold in the United Kingdom. It stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as criminal lovers whose perfect crime begins to unravel when Ronet is trapped in an elevator. The film is often associated by critics with the film noir style. At the time of the film's release, it introduced new narrative and editing techniques. The film is considered an important work of cinema at the base of the Nouvelle Vague and the New Modern Cinema.

The film additionally presents unique and completely new solutions in the history of cinema in the relationship between music and image. The film's score is considered by many as groundbreaking.The score by Miles Davis has been described by jazz critic Phil Johnson as, "The loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear, and the model for sad-core music ever since. Hear it and weep."